i have an idea, when you win the lottery, you can buy me a cup of coffee. >> that will do it for us, i will see you back here in one hour filling in for anderson cooper. don't forget, you can always tweet me @wolfblitzer. out front next today, president obama and speaker of the house john boehner both hint that a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff is on the way. possibly in time for santa. i asked republican john cornyn whether he thinks that is a reality. and governor romney sits down with the president since the election, actually since the debates. does this do either of them any good? rick santorum is out front. and julian assange is out front

to answer critics and our questions tonight. let's go "out front." good evening, everyone. i'm erin burnett, outfront tonight, an early christmas miracle. or at least the glimmer of one today. barack obama bringing glad ti tidings of great joy to avoid the fiscal cliff. >> i will go anywhere and do anything it takes to get this done. it's too important for washington to screw this up. >> and john boehner, not to be outdone, put a little early present under the tree too. >> i'm optimistic that we can continue to work together to avert this crisis and sooner rather than later. >> these are pretty glum faces to deliver those presents. no smile from either one of them.

but investors didn't care, they're excited about the present, the dow gained more than a full percent throughout the day. will we have a true christmas miracle? courtesy of those two. oh, let's hope that they don't wear those hats. i spoke this evening with republican senator john cornyn of texas, he's the republican whip and member of the finance committee, and i asked him what has he actually done to help get this deal done, not the night before, but before christmas. >> we have said that revenue, is something that the president said he needs, we have made the point that revenue is on the table. even if we were to conceive hypothetically, what the present has asked for, to let the tax rates go up on the top brackets, it would run the government for

a limited period of time. so the president really needs to tell us what his plan is. i'm increasingly pessimistic, not optimistic, because the president seems to be campaigning, rather than going anywhere and doing anything to get a deal. because if we don't get a deal, it will hurt a lot of people. >> are you saying that the way we're going now, we could actually go off the fiscal cliff? >> we don't know what the president has said he needs, because revenue is not enough to solve the problem. as you know, we have a trillion dollar annual deficit and this would not close that gap at all. so the president needs to come up with a plan and for better or worse going to require leadership. no member of the senate or the house is going to be able to do

this, this is something the president has to do by himself and he can't do it on the campaign trail. >> let me ask you this because you wrote an op-ed today and you wrote about divided government about the deal. you said divided government means that neither democrats nor republicans will be able to pass legislation along strictly partisan lines. we cannot tax our way back to budget surpluses and economic prosperity without major spending cuts and entitle 347b9 reforms we will continue running a huge deficit regardless of what anyone does on either side. for every dollar of revenue you give him, he'll give you $2.50 of spending cuts. if he gave you that on spending cuts, it would be 8$850 billon year would you do that? >> the president has said a lot

of things, but what counts is what he's willing to put on the table and so far, he hasn't put medicare and social security, saving and preserving those entitlement programs on the table. i believe they have to be, because if we're going to preserve those for future generations, we need to do something meaningful on those. the problem is, erin, if we just do cuts in temporary spending, those can easily be undone. we know there's been a lot of promises made in exchange for tax increases and it never comes to pass when it comes to spending cuts. >> there was a "washington post" poll which said raise taxes on incomes over $250,000 a year, 60% support it. when you ask about raising medicare coverage from 65 to 57,

most people oppose that. so do you have the courage to say, we have to raise retirement age. raising taxes on the wealthy is easy. >> it is hard to do and you can't do it on a partisan basis. this election did not produce a mandate for president obama or our democratic friends, we have got exactly the same thing we had before the election which is divided government. >> he has more people in congress than he had before and he did win the election and he was clear he wanted to raise taxes on the rich. >> we have got divided government, neither party could do what they want to alone, like the first two years that obama was president, we got obama care and other pieces of legislation. i think people want well thought out negotiated bipartisan solutions to the problem. you don't get that when the president has no plan to close that hole and to deal with medicare and social.

and he spends his time not around the negotiating table, but rather conducting rallys outside of town. i just think he's not serious about this. >> the president has said he would support raising the age for medicare coverage for a ten-year period. >> he has said a lot of things at different times, but he has not placed those on the table. we have leading senators like senator durbin who has the courage to deal with these issues. he was on the simpson-bowles committee who said that we can't deal with those now in the dealing with the fiscal cliff, we need to put that off into the future. my experience is what you put off to the future never happen here. >> i hope we can get a deal. me too. >>. great to see both of you.

john let me start with you. cornyn is pessimistic, but the markets are up today, despite the glum faces we have seen. cornyn has said he's pessimis c pessimistic, is he willing realistic or do you think we're going to get a deal? >> i think he's being a strategic scrooge. he's saying we need a balanced plan, but the president's not dealing with entitlealment reform and cuts. to give a balanced plan, republicans have to cut taxes. >> he said i put revenue on the table. but he wouldn't talk about the rates. >> also when asked about these specific entitlement reforms, he didn't talk about those either. we need to see some substance behind that. >> did you hear level ground

where that can be forged? i don't know the difference between talking about stuff and putting it on the table. it seems like senator cornyn sees some difference there. i don't really get it. the hole is not as big as he says it is. we're not going into the hole with a trillion dollar deficit every year, because we're going to grow every year and collect more revenue. and we also see some of these stimulus programs narrowing down a little bit so the hole's not that big and there seems to be more common ground that the senator admits. >> we hope you're right. >> in previous negotiations, it's been put forward but everyone's got to push forward. >> it's easy to race taxes on one group, at of people agree with that, but the bottom line is those entitlement cuts are going to be a lot more painful for both republicans and democrats, but they're going to

have to do that. rick santorum is up next. and for the second straight day, the u.n. ambassador susan rice met with republican lawmakers, one of them, susan collins was not impressed. in the past seven years people have died because of tadsers. a woman who nearly died during an arrest caught on tape wants that changed. oh no, not a migraine now. try this...

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our second story out front is the meeting of the minds. president obama is going to meet with mitt romney for the first time since the presidential elections. >> the president said that there are aspects of governor romney's record and governor romney's ideas that he believes could be

very helpful. >> can the former foes work together? rick santorum challenged romney for the republican nomination. and he joins me now. great to see you. there's been so much criticism of romney in recent weeks, from your own party. when he made the comment on to the call with donors on how the president got voted because he gave roots to some voting blocs. today stewart stevens, romney's campaign chief tried to defend him in an op-ed. he said over the years, one of the movie more troubling characteristics of the democratic party -- losing is losing, so is losing just losing or are these criticisms that have come from people like bobby fare? >> i think it's important any time you lose is to do a review.

there was a lot of discourse on the republican side, i certainly weighed in on that and how we need to do more of talking to folks who tried to rise the economic ladder in 24 country. i think that had a real touch stone with a lot of folks. those sorts of things i think are helpful that we bring to the table and siay this might be a better way to move forward and win our elections. >> you were proactive saying i think we would do this better, but others are saying mitt romney did this poorly. do you think there was something about mitt specifically that was a problem? >> well, look, mitt romney is who he is. i think everyone who's now looking back and saying oh, mitt romney was out of touch. did they not know that mitt romney was a successful

businessman at bain capital and these are issues that were raised more than four years ago. there were people that supported him along the way and knew this would be a vulnerability. i think it's unfair to go after mitt romney on that. he ran, as far as i'm concerned, as a candidate, i saw him three days before the election and i said to him, you really did a good job, he improved his game as he went along and i thought he did a good job. i theink he ran the campaign ona very narrow basis, by deflecting everything back to the economy. that's what he did in the primary and that's what he said he was going to do from the beginning. he just executed a plan that didn't work. the very people criticizing him were the people supporting him saying he was going to win. >> we just talked to senator john cornyn, he said he's pessimistic that they will get a

deal. >> my view, we all agree that we're not going to raise taxes on people that make less than $250,000, we should take them out of this discussion right now, and continue to fight against any rate increases and continue to work honestly for a better deal. >> that's what the president wants, extend them for everyone under $250,000. i'm curious what you think. do you think that someone like cornyn, someone like boehner is the right leader for the party, or someone more like what cole is saying? >> there is a strategy to putting together a deal and that goes for, in washington, d.c. or, you know, in your private life. and that is you don't give the other side everything they want and then negotiate the rest of the deal. that's sort of a problem. you have things that they want,

things that you want and you have to sort of bring them together and force people to give things that they don't want in order to get the things that they do. and when you give the folks the thing that they have been wanting most out of the box, and not get anything in return, you're not leaving yourself in a very good position to get what you want in the end. >> do you think boehner's doing a good job? >> i'm not following him very closely. i'm down in dallas, and we're working on some business things down here. i think you have got to go out and articulate what you want for the country. and i'm hoping that our leadership won't get bogged down in the details, making sure we're responsible in cutting back the enormous growth in government and put obama care on the table. there's one entitlement you can cut that no one is going to get hurt or helped or either because we haven't spent the money yet.

it hasn't been implemented yet. it's kind of a painless way to take some spending off the table. >> that probably would happen over the president's dead body, but all right. rick santorum, always nice to see you. >> obama care or medicare, i'm not too sure it would be over his dead body. good to see you, up next, julian assange, he's posted hundreds of thousands of american military documents, videos, american classified documents on the web. and almost 500 people have died in the past 11 years when law enforcement used tasers. is it excessive force? up next. heard this news about a multivitamin study looking at long-term health benefits for men over 50. the one they used in that study... centrum silver. that's what i take. my doctor! he knows his stuff.

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our third story out front, the danger of tasers. over the past 11 years, nearly 500 people have died after being shocked by these electronic stun guns. this is according to amnesty internal. they are fast becoming the weapon of choice for officers. one recent arrest was caught on camera and is reigniting the debate over the use of tasers.

we want to warn you some of the images that you're going to see here that happened are disturbing. >> reporter: how does a seemingly normal traffic stop go from this -- >> is that your current address? >> no, i moved -- >> reporter: to this. >> ow! >> reporter: june 4 of this year, pulled over off a busy california freeway. she says she lost her way and pulled over to figure out how to get home. the police officers say jones was trying to hide something. they conducted a sobriety test and allowed to return to her kaur. she begins to question why she's being held. >> you're getting it all wrong. i'm trying to get home. >> you're not acting as someone

who hasn't done anything wrong. >> reporter: when officers try to control her, she bolts. and then she's tased. jones going into cardiac arrest. her only and last response, a long and erie moment. >> reporter: jones was charged with resisting arrest and drug possession. jones says she remembers nothing of that night and has suffered brain damage. >> they detained her far too long, they scared her when she ran to the car out of fear. after 15 minutes of an unjustified stop they tased her and caused her to go into cardiac arrest. >> a law enforcement veteran

says it is essential for police to give suspects clear discussion and there's one thing that he doesn't understand. >> it's unusual for an officer to put somebody back in their car if they feel they're still in danger. a reasonable officer wouldn't have found that. >> a drug test found thc in her blood, but it's not clear whether she smoked pot that night. a civil case against the california highway patrol is being prepared. >> and we received this response from taser tonight. we are concerned about this incident and eagerly await for more information. it is impossible to make a medical diagnosis from a youtube video in which we can't see exactly what occurred. u.s. ambassador to the u.n., susan rice, she spent a second day answering questions from

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welcome back to the second half of "outfront" we start with stories we care about. we begin with the environmental protection agency temporarily blocking bp from bidding on new government contracts. while the ban is indefinite, bp is trying to have the ban lifted soon. and in new jersey, superstorm sandy caused nearly $37 billion in damage, of that 7.4 billion reflects the cost of future disasters according to governor chris christie who says

4,300 homes were damaged. a boat has washed up on the coast of japan. this is a truly bizarre incident. but a local police chief tells us that the small wooden boat had feint characters on the side that they think are korean. the rebels from the republic of the congo will withdraw as a condition to -- hillary clinton weighed in on the conflict today calling on all african leaders to stand in support of the rebels. it has been 482 days since

the u.s. lost it's favored credit rating. they say the economy's actually expanding, but they're still really worried about, you know, the fiscal cliff. and now our fourth story "outfront" for the second day in a row, susan rice met with republican senators, some of whom obviously have harshly criticized her for ther handlin of the attack in benghazi. the moderate susan collins spoke to us. >> i continue to be troubled by the fact that the u.n. ambassador decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious

presidential election campaign. >> yet the president continues to stand by susan rice. >> susan rice is extraordinary. couldn't be prouder of the job that she's done at the u.n. >> all right, tim, when you hear senator collins, you know, she is influential, she is moderate, come out and say look, i'm not satisfied, sort of turning her back on susan rice, she had the moment in front of the microphone to endorse, she did not. should the administration cut its losses and say this might not be the right nominee. >> not at all. i think the president won the ele electi election. respect to suzanne collins' comments, she's obviously very

influential and her support is important. but one thing she did say is that she wouldn't necessarily supporters blocking susan rice. we do have to give administration officials the space to do their jobs and in this case, ambassador rice was doing her job in talking about the i tacks. >> let me ask you ryan about something that senator collins said, that she did not come out and actually say, i'm going to block susan rice's nomination. she did say that john kerry would be an excellent appointment and would be easily confirmed. tell us why that might not quite be what republicans think it is. >> one issue is that it's senator john kerry becomes secretary of state john kerry and suddenly there's a special election in new jersey and some people were thinking about the opportunity for republicans. >> scott brown.

>> scott brown is very popular and that's one angle. conservatives also have policy priorities, and one thing we have noticed is that while senator collins has gone one way, criticizing susan rice. i suspect that there are also people that are skeptical that senator kerry shares that position. >> he's more dovish than rice. >> a lot of folks including bill crystal who actually care about these things, are saying wait a second, republicans, susan rice might be a better pick than john kerry. >> he was very careful and he's

been careful to not say he's for or against susan rice but he did have a warning for the president. here he is. >> i would just ask that the president step away from all the buzz around this particular situation and take a deep breath and decide who is the best secretary of state for our country, at this time when we have so many issues to deal with. >> i don't know whether that was a veiled reference to pick someone else or not. but the question, tim, is does the administration need to have a fight about this right now? >> look, i think senator corker was exactly right that the president should step back and pick exactly who he wants. but the more important issue is they should be focusing on different things about benghazi. number one, let's bring those people that were responsible for the benghazi attack to justice

and let's make sure that this never happens again. but the president having won the election is going to turn to the one he thinks is going to do the best job. regardless of the massachusetts special election, he's going to pick the right person. >> susan rice is a very accomplished diplomat, she's also african-american. a lot of people think she's done absolutely nothing wrong. she's come out and made her case. how do they block her? >> certainly they can try to sustain a filibuster, but people are going to defect from that. i think it actually makes sense for president obama to pick a fight on behalf of susan rice in part because it demonstrates to his base that he's not going to roll over and play dead. and that's what senator corker might want to get across, you might want to two this to make a point, but is that real the best thing to do. i think president obama is in the mood to flex some of his

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our fifth story out front, the man behind wikileaks. julian assange is one of the world's most controversial people. the 31-year-old australian has posted hundreds of thousands of u.s. military documents and classified documents on his website. the government believes his source is military pilot bradley manning who stands accused of stealing classified documents and getting them to wikileaks. he's faced with 22 charges including aiding the enemy. he could spend life in jail. assange has not been charged with the united states. for the past five months he's been living in the ecuadoran

embassy in london. he is facing extradition to sweden where he faces sexual charges which he denieses. it's great to see you, mr. assange, i wanted to start by asking you something that i see in the very beginning of your work. the internet is a threat socialization. why is the internet bad? >> well, here's the book here as well. it's on the back as well, that quote. but the internet has become integral to socialization, it is the device by which we communicate, by which we communicate our personal lives to one another. so the internet and civilization has merged.

and that's a new phenomenon. it's not just that this has affected one colony buzz the global civilization has merged, is merging via the internet. so this affects civilization in a serious way. the big problem we have now is the control and mass buying that's occurring on the internet. that's something that has really shifted and changes in the past ten years, mainly because the technology to do it has become cheaper. >> let me just ask you a little bit about, you talk about cables that obviously are at the center of this entire case, in the book. and obviously bradley manning is the one who had them, he's in a pretrial hearing, he's trying to get the charges against him thrown out of court. but he could spend the rest of his life in jail. the information that the

government says he stole was published by you. no matter where he got its, you published it. >> bradley manning is in court today in the united states and throughout this week. the case is not whether bradley manning allegedly sold the cables. the case is about the abuse of bradley manning. over a five-month period bradley manning was abused. the united nations has admitted this, a speciwhy was he treated way? h several were ordered to abuse him to get a confession. there's been no confession and that's the case that's going on now. and that case is a reflection in the decay of the rule of law.

hillary clinton's spokesperson resigned over the issue. the entire quantico prisoner base was affected. it reflects serious problems within the military system. it has a feeling about accountability and unaccountability is flowing into other parts of our life. >> now i don't want to get into detail, i know you have a strong point of view, obviously on how bradley manning has been treated. but i didn't want to go down that path. i wanted to ask a question about something else you thought about him. you said what they were dog is perhaps to coerce him to get you involved in all of this. he could make a deal to serve limited time. and to make that deal, you could be the guy who loses out. are you worried that that could be the deal, he says this is what julian assange did to get the information so you could leak it.

there's a concurrent process that's occurring for the last two years, an ongoing grand jury who has sucked in a vast number of people and compelling them to testify, pulling all sorts of records, pulling our twitter records to get information about me. pulling information from gmail. pulling information about american service providers, et cetera, et cetera. part of the reason that this book has been written, is that we have become very aware of what all these mechanisms are. one of the co-workers jacob applebaum just filled in with me once in court. he is being detained at airports and so on. you can read about these details in the book. let's go back to, this is just a small symptom, in a way what's

happening to julian assange is not particularly important, except that it isart of a much wider process. it's not just the process that i'm talking about. it's a process that all the top national security journalists in the united states are talking about. donna priest from the "washington post," in her book top secret america, where she likens what's going on as a metastasizing cancer. we now have 5 million people in the national security clearance system in the united states. a state within a state. now it's not just the united states. this is a worldwide phenomena. and you can look at the spy fil files, and you can google wikileaks fbi files, of over 175 companies around the world that

sell this mass surveillance technology. we're not saying, oh, look, we just spoke to julian assange, now we'll spy on you. it is cheaper now to intercept all communications in and out of a country. store it to go after one person. and there are companies in south africa that were selling that into libya. this is not a matter of speculation. these are documents from these companies that are secret per spec tuses that are sold. you will see it. plenty of good work is being done on this. a whole bunch of journalists. i'm curious about this. a lot of people share this fear. right? you know, some people might say

you go too far on it. but you are someone out there trying to champion and benefiting by the internet by putting out information that the governments don't want you to have. i wanted to ask you where you are tonight. first one question i wanted to ask you about this. officials from ecuador say that you have had a lung infects and that you have been sick since you have had to stay there. being in an erk textraordinary situation. >> that is not important. democracies die behind closed doors. >> do you not want to talk about it? >> i don't think it is important. >> let me ask you this. >> this is a serious situation now. >> let me ask you this, as you

say, you have been there for four or five months, they are trying to get you out of the country that you are in. but you know, when you talk about this, you know governments clamping down on the right to speak and i wanted to lay this out for you, because this month, human rights reports that the president of ecuador. >> let me finish and then you can go ahead and rip it apart. freedom of expression is from the state. >> i'm not here to talk about all governments have their problems. i'm not here to -- i heard it. >> it is the government that has -- >> i have heard things about whatever. come on. >> let's be realistic. >> it is not a little thing for someone who says that their job is to put out information.

>> it is a big problem all over the world and so is the collapse in the rule of law and you should be well aware that al jazeir are a journalists are taking a position where it is saying, that the act of receiving information by any journalist anywhere in the world that the represepentagon says i classified is spying and that is something that is plies to journalists and also to government. but they say about ecuador hold on. in less than five years. >> as we agreed -- >> the issue is the surveillance state. we are in a situation --

>> i didn't agree to talk about the surveillance state. >> i'm sorry. look, do you want to bring my pa's on? >> please please. >> so look, let's be honest. we have a serious situation here. whatever little things are occurring in this country are not our concern. >> it is the country that is preventing you from being arrested the moment you walk outside the door. >> including yeawestern europe the former libya. we have researched it. we have documented it. >> then why will you not talk about ecuador? >> because it is insignificant. >> but it is the country that is enabling you to not be arrested. >> it is people have been generous to me. >> yes. >> but it is not a significant world player. >> south america and the

developments that are happening there are interesting and significant and it is growing in independence but they are not the topic of what we are doing here. the topic of this book is what is happening to all of us and the threats that we all face. you know, in the 1930s. certain people saw what was going on and they saw the general trends. i'm telling you there is a general trend. i'm an expert and i've lived through it. other experts live through different facets of this. we are experts on different parts of what is happening in terms of the technology. now, we are all being intercepted permanently. this is a state change. this is not a matter of a small change. it is a change in politics and we are going to have to do something about it. if we don't do something about

it. we run the risk of losing the democracy that we treasured for so long. we will leave it on that note. we will be right back. music is a universal language. but when i was in an accident... i was worried the health care system spoke a language all its own

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